hydrocarbons21.com caught up with Doug Schmidt from embraco at ATMOsphere America to talk about the market perspectives for hydrocarbons in North America. Whilst Schmidt believes North America will trail behind Europe in terms of hydrocarbon use a few more years to come, in part due to regulation, or lack there of, company policies to promote sustainability and energy efficiency are helping to drive market uptake.

According to Doug Schmidt the marekt perspectives for hydrocarbons in North Amercia are "very good". However, there remain some key challenges to be overcome to accelerate market uptake. One of these is how to motivate the end users to help drive the market.

Another challenge is the charge limit. In the US hydrocarbon isobutane refrigerators can only have slightly more than one third of the approved charge of hydrocarbons in Europe, 57grams. There is also a 150 gram charge limit for walk-in refrigerators or freezers, ice machines, frozen ice cream machines or frozen carbonated beverage machines.

To overcome the 150g charge limit some OEMs are redesigning their cabinets, in addition to looking at tubing, heat exchange surfaces and using forced air evaporators or condensers. There are also OEMs adopting two systems in a single cabinet.

However, whilst overcoming the charge limit for commercial applications is important, Schmidt estimates that there are almost 6 times as many household applications for hydrocarbons compared to commercial applications. With almost 7 million household applications compared to 1.6 commercial applications, the household market dwarfs the commercial business.

If you want to make a real change in terms of the environment and the amount and type of refrigerant being used, we have to get the household industry to move in the natural or hydrocarbon direction,” Doug Schmidt, Sales Manager, Commercial Cooling Solutions Manager, embraco North America.